Halloween 2011

Well we've had a fun last couple of days with a fall party and Halloween parade at daycare and trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.  It all felt a little last minute - our neighborhood is big on outdoor decor (think full on cemetaries and giant spiders crawling up houses) and we didn't even buy our pumpkins until Saturday morning.  No biggie though, we woke up Saturday and went to a neighborhood zoo that has a few farm animals, some ducks, and best of all - pumpkins.  Sawyer was a bit unsure of the animals, preferring to spend her time in the old train caboose that was there or watching the ducks in the pond.  Isla on the other hand loved her some farm animals.  She was climbing up the fence to try and get a better look and would kind of shreek with delight at them.  After a quick walk around, we let Sawyer select our pumpkins, we got Isla her first and very own stuffed animal - a horse we have named Harvey - and headed back home feeling like we no longer have to hide our heads with shame in the neighborhood for having NOTHING fall/Halloween related.

Our little Van Gogh decided to paint one pumpkin... 

And Sunday after spending the day at our friend's house we came home and carved up two more and introduced Sawyer to pumpkin seeds.  She did not disappoint, as I'm sure you guessed, and took a handful with her on her way up to bed that night. 

The weekend itself was pretty good otherwise.  Mark and I escaped for a night on the town Saturday, hitting up some sushi downtown before catching a concert.  We went to see that band 10 years ago with a bunch of friends while at Notre Dame, and I have to say, I felt a lot older this time around.  We ended up leaving a bit early due to all the smoke and no longer knowing as many of the tunes.  Ahh - such is life.  Honestly, I could have just sat at the sushi restaurant and had a bottle of wine and the night would have been great. 

Quick snap of Isla, who is starting to get better at real people food.  Her favorite thing is probably yogurt, but I took a picture of her on this night because she had eaten frozen, wild blueberries (thanks to my friend Aimee for the suggestion), shredded cheese, and a little piece of ravioli.  I've also gotten her to eat some banana, but generally she still only likes puffs, yogurt melts, and freeze-dried fruits. As I was telling her daycare teacher, I'm not sure I can complain if her favorite thing to eat is still organic pureed vegetable baby food - she loves the spinach, pumpkin, sweet potato, blueberry and purple carrot, etc.  I'm pretty sure it's better than processed cheese and such.  Girl doesn't have any teeth yet, but we know they're coming b/c it's obvious her gums bother her.

Sawyer started in on her sugar high right away that weekend, indulging in the candy from her daycare's fall party and treats her other classmates brought in.  Her favorites were the eyeball gum (gum in general is a new favorite thing...she finds it in my purse every now and then) and suckers.  Ignore the mop of hair - she's going for haircut #3 tomorrow...and yes, that's accurate, this will only be her third ever hair cut. 

As for the main event, I took part of the day off so I could go to the daycare Halloween party.  Sawyer wasn't really digging it - she's been real clingy with me for the last two weeks or so and if she lost sight of me it would send her into a panic.  So, after collecting Isla from her classroom I carried one, and held hands with the other for the entire parade...which thankfully only lasted about 10 minutes.  We hit the road pretty early, grabbed some food on the way home, and went home to wait for Daddy so we could trick-or-treat.  Sawyer was itching to go so bad, I finally had to get them dressed and at least outside just to appease her.

Sawyer was Scooby Doo and Isla was a Monkey.

A very serious Scooby Doo

And then a very happy Scooby Doo

I'm actually surprised at how well Sawyer did trick-or-treating.  She only went to about 8 houses, but said Trick or Treat and Thank you at each one.  She did like the houses where they just had a bowl outside, and would sometimes avoid a house where she had to ring the doorbell in favor of the easy way out.  After the 8th house she was so excited about all the candy she had, she said she was done and didn't need any more, and was ready to go home.  Mark and I were both ok with that because our little monkey was a handful.  While we started out with the stroller, she wanted out as soon as she saw Mark.  She then proceeded to go back and forth between walking, Mark holding her, me holding her, falling...if she had any candy in her I might have said she was on sugar high, but the girl hadn't even eaten dinner.

Her costume is a bit big and so she looks more like a bear to me...

But we put her in the bumblebee when we got home.  Sawyer was really digging all the people coming to the door and would run ahead of us, hold the bowl, and let us put the candy in.  Such a difference from last year when she refused to trick or treat, or go near the door when it rang.

Not at all happy with this costume change...I get it, the monkey suit probably felt like sweatpants do to me.

And with that, the madness is over.  I'm headed to the store this weekend to try and score some discounted outdoor decor so that I will not be off-guard next year.  We'll see what I find...And just for fun, here's a picture of Sawyer in her rain coat from this morning.  Grandma - she got lots of compliments on it at school!